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"Carl Bonta" Prototype E-mag: EM00035

The beginning: E-mag EM00035 was one of the prototype e-mags created by AGD when the E-mags first came out. It was featured on the AGDE Website as well as the front page of airgundesignusa.com

It was also taken on tour and featured at IAO 2000 to show off to the general public.

The Chop: After the initial release of the E-mags, the prototype was given to AGD Tech Carl Bonta by AGD as a gift. Carl decided to move the battery pack, rewire the marker so it would work with the intellifeed, create a custom superbolt and install a bike grip.

Controversy: The marker was originally bought and sold in 2001, but in 2003, BarretC posted on AO asked about the modifications that Carl did to the marker, Tom Kaye posted in the thread stating…

“That marker was made by Carl Bonta who used to work for us. It was given to him as a prototype and was not to be sold. It is not up to ANY kind of spec and is far from what we are currently producing.

WE WILL NOT WORK ON THIS MARKER!! BUY AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Its posts like this that cause us to destroy prototypes now.

AGD”

Gone for good: The same year BarretC posted the question, Cyberious bought the E-mag to go a long with his other Carl Bonta prototype. While he had the marker he had to constantly work on the battery. He also rebuilt the valve and installed a level 10 bolt and attached the battery to the side of his Ricochet 2k instead.

My research found that Cyberious lost interest in the project after he purchased an X-mag and throughout the years he donated the parts from the E-mag to other AO members like RobAGD, KayleAGD, and the Frymarker. It seemed like the prototype e-mag was gone for good.

Owner List: AGD >Carl Bonta >i-luv-my-rt>BarretC>Cyberious>Bunny

My story: My story begins when I find a post from Cyberious in 2009 selling two very strange e-mag valves. Never seeing them before on the market I decided to make an offer for both Stainless Steel Emag valves. In the deal I bought both valves and did a little bit of research about them. It was really exciting to know that I bought two of the first E-mags ever designed by AGD. Unfortunately, I had a handful of projects in line so I was not able to do anything with the valves for a few years. So they sat collecting dust underneath my bed.

I went on a paintball hiatus and didn’t really tinker around with any of my markers for a few years until the paintball bug bit me. I decided to look on Craigslist for a good deal on a e-mag to start the restoration project.

I found an E-mag for $350 locally with a ULE Body, Extra Battery and Battery Pack, Warp, etc and decided to take the plunge. I have never done a Craigslist deal before, but thought it might be worth it. I drove from VA to Frederick, Maryland to make the deal in a Wegman’s parking lot. It seemed ultra shady, but luckily we both were close to the same age and dragged both of our girlfriends along as body guards, so it was a quick and easy deal.

I quickly got home and decided to sell off the parts to recoup some of the money left over, I sold the CP ASA, ULE Body, etc and kept the rest.
Now that I have the bulk of the emag, I still needed to track down the rest of the parts to completely restore this marker.

Vert Feed Body

Vert Feed Barrel

Custom Selector Switch

Anodizing

The first part I needed as the rare vertical body with the original vert barrel. I never really looked for them before, but quickly realized that they aren’t floating on AO as much as I thought they were. I decided to message Tunaman and he had the Vert Body for $90.00. I made the deal and got the body, but it looked like someone did a Vert feed mod on it and removed an inch from the feedneck which was fine. It actually looked exactly like the body I needed. The body looked welded so I was crossing my fingers that we could polished it up to get rid of the blow torch effect.

The second part was to track down a Vertical RT Barrel for the body. I stumbled on a ebay page with a picture of a Vertical Teflon Body and RT Barrel. I decided to gamble on it and bid $80.00 and won the listing, without knowing if it was a original RT barrel, or if it was a barrel that someone dremeled. Lucky for me, it was original barrel without any modifications.

Now that I had most of the parts that needed to be anodized, I contacted Tonsixer from PBN and sent him my project design. He said he was able to recreate the finish and I decided to go for it. In the past I did not have much success with anodizers, but felt like Tonsixer was cranking out some amazing work and took a leap of faith with him.

While figuring out the anodizing, I contacted Renie from AO and he graciously recreated an aluminum selector switch to match the original picture that I had. Since he worked on my custom battery pack for my John Sosta X-mag, he also created two selector switches for my prototype e-mags.

I guess I will get this out of the way now, shipping to/from Canada takes a long time. It takes about a month to go through customs both ways. Oh ya, make sure you DON’T declare the marker when you ship it for anodizing. I was almost had a $45 duty charge included on my invoice. I realized that this build would take a lot longer than my normal anodizing jobs so the extra wait time was not an issue.

It took about a month for Tonsixer to start work, but he had an issue with the Turquoise color which delayed the project a few more weeks. After waiting a while, Tonsixer sent me a PM which nearly caused a heart-attack. Apparently the battery casing and lid would not take the turquoise color that I requested. He wanted to replace the turquoise with silver instead.

I quickly replied to his PM and by the time I had sent my response, he sent me the picture of the finished product. He was able to get the color to “stick” to the battery pack and I was very happy to see the end results. If I had to change the color to silver, it would have nullified the entire build. I was really glad he kept working at it to finally get it to take correctly.

Tonsixer’s communication was great, he kept things simple, but when he needed to explain things it was nice that he attached pictures for me to look at. He also gave me a discount on my anodizing job because of how long it took to finish.

I quickly paid to get the marker sent back home. It took about 16 days to get through customs and finally reach my home. It was packaged professionally, nothing shifted or moved at all while I shook the box with excitement. I opened it up and found each piece wrapped and protected.

I would consider this as a restoration to it’s original form. I really wish I could have purchased the marker back in the day with all of its chop shop parts on it. It was a really fun build that came out great. It’s amazing that a paintball marker from over 12+ years ago could still look awesome. It is a true testament for what Tom Kaye and his crew designed way back when.

Wow another great build bunny. I think I see 2 in a row for the MOTM! Now are you going to keep it the way it is or try and modify it the way Carl Bonta did it? Either way great job. Any more future restorations? These are all becoming pretty interesting.

Freedy500: Thanks bro!! It's funny that my e-mag is going up against one of my old SFL emags. Looks like I will have to take it down! Btw, i'm going to keep it original to the regular configuration. Unless Carl Bonta comes out of the woodwork and voluteers to do all the work, i'm going to keep it a classic shooter.

I have a couple more builds that i'm working on, but they will take at least 2-3 months.

zondo:

knownothingmags: I knew I should of put a disclaimer at the end incase people didn't read it! I've switched my "collecting" happens and mainly focus on the research of it all. It is really fun to dig into the past to find this information.

The AGD website picture came from a forum post back in 2001 on a random european paintball forum.

The IAO picture came from the wayback machine site from paintball.com published in 2000.

The chop picture was found in a random forum post from pbnation.com The actual picture was attached and still worked properly to this day.

Freedy500: Thanks bro!! It's funny that my e-mag is going up against one of my old SFL emags. Looks like I will have to take it down! Btw, i'm going to keep it original to the regular configuration. Unless Carl Bonta comes out of the woodwork and voluteers to do all the work, i'm going to keep it a classic shooter.

I have a couple more builds that i'm working on, but they will take at least 2-3 months.

zondo:

knownothingmags: I knew I should of put a disclaimer at the end incase people didn't read it! I've switched my "collecting" happens and mainly focus on the research of it all. It is really fun to dig into the past to find this information.

The AGD website picture came from a forum post back in 2001 on a random european paintball forum.

The IAO picture came from the wayback machine site from paintball.com published in 2000.

The chop picture was found in a random forum post from pbnation.com The actual picture was attached and still worked properly to this day.

I had a good feeling the one and only would comment on thi . Now my question is, how do you find these old posts from way back when. I understand how you get to them but do you just have a magic word you type in for instantly sexy and historic mags'? if so let me in on this secret

Freedy500: The the wayback machine is amazing, it will keep a record of most websites posted on the internet. To really find obsure information you have to find posts with links/directories and run it through the wayback machine. Sometimes you will be able to find pictures that were embedded onto the websites....

Any idea where the rest of the original marker went? If I am reading the thread correctly, the only original part is the valve right? I wonder where the rest of the pieces ended up? Thats a pretty distintive ano pattern, I wonder if it is sitting in someones closet somewhere or did it get reanodized? I remember seeing some guy with an EMag frame for sale a few months back that was similiarly cut and had the battery rerouted, but it was polished black IIRC.

GEE TEE: His splash designs are crazy. Check out his thread on pbnation for more pics!

OPBN: For the most part it was slowly parted throughout the years, by the time Cyberious sold it all that was left was the valve. I put together the owners list, but most of the guys do not frequent AO anymore, they may still have some parts sitting in the closet, which I would happily buy off of them

If I remember correctly that was AGDjon selling a proteam emag. I thought about buying it , but chopping up the history of that gun would be a shame since it was one of the first proteam emags.

It seemed like alot of AGD techs back in the day were trying to figure out a way to remove the battery pack from the emag.

EMag #33 I bought here in Orlando from someone. It was my primary marker for a couple of years. It played in a World Cup and multiple other Tourneys. It was always the fastest shooting marker on the field. It also was at Shatnerball 2 and was used by my brother-in-law there. You can actually see it in a few scenes of the DVD. Once I bought an X-Mag it was all over though.

EMag #35 I bought from a shop where it had been abandoned. I put a Morlock board in it and played it some. They basically gave out though and once I started parting them out it was all over.

I sold the battery packs to someone here.

Other parts I may still have laying around here for them.

One of the bodies was actually used by Heather Frymark to build the Kitt-E Claire B Homage Marker along with the body from Claire's original eMag the E-Kitty(which I still have the parts to). The Valve to #33 was used in this marker for a while.

Even as trashed as they were when I got them, once I fixed the electronics they both worked great for me for some time. As I used to help AGDJon work the booth at WorldCups and other events I always had to hide them in case Tom came by as I knew the sight of what Bonta had done used to make him mad. Heck it made me mad.

Owning them was a labor of love though. If you have any magazines from the time you will notice that EMag #34 was featured in the old Jax Warriors ads. But these 2 which I was told were the first production EMags always held a special place for me. Had I been the original owner they would still be in pristine shape. I am glad that you are giving them the care they should have.

As a matter of fact here is some of the stuff. Here is the original barrel, scope holder, body (that Bonta chopped for the warp), and the original aluminum selector switch for EM000033). Also pictures of the Kitt-E that Heather Frymark and I were working on. It also use a Morlock Board when I had the valve to EM000033 in it. The body is from Claire's original EMag the E-Kitty, I think the frame is from one of the 2 originals though I don't remember which.IMG_0528.jpgIMG_0527.jpgIMG_0529.jpg

Cyberious: Thanks for the write-up! Is this the Jax Warriors gun you were talking about?

Btw, I was shocked to see that you still have some of the original parts from EM00033. I'm glad we could make a deal to reunite the parts back onto the original gun. Hopefully in a few weeks I can show off the end result

Just a small addition to this thread...

The Emag body with the shortened feedneck that he got from me is NOT a hack job. Those bodies were custom made for me by Dave at AGD. He was supposed to use Automag bodies but used emag bodies instead by mistake. They are one of a kind and only a few are in existance. I do have one more here is anyone wants it. They are not polished from the factory.

It's funny, I lucked out on the build. The one-off bodies match exactly to what the prototype e-mag had. I was looking for a "stove-top" body, but it would have worked since it is a lot longer than what I was looking for.

It sure looks like the original anodized rail from the original gun. It might not look like much, but I think it is awesome to be able to track down these unique parts and put them back with the original valve.